Even after three months the dust on Advani-Jinnah controversy refuses
to settle down. A plethora of Jinnah literature has cropped
up in the media across the country. It smacks of an exhilarating
experience like travelling back to the mid 20th century in H. G. Wells’
time machine! There has hardly been a newspaper or magazine,
a columnist or historian of repute who has not dwelt on various
aspects of the Partition of the Indian subcontinent and Mohammad
Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan.

The latest to add to it is a significant interview in The Times
of India with Ms. Ayesha Jalal, the renowned research scholar
and biographer of Jinnah. In a profound observation she affirmed
that the founder of Pakistan “wanted Pakistan to be part of India”.
Although essentially of only academic value after nearly six
decades of the event, her remarks merit serious attention.
She pointed out that Jinnah always envisaged Pakistan
“to be a necessary part of the all-India conception”.
Most of his speeches alluded to “Pakistan and Hindustan
and not Pakistan and India” She deplored the Advani
controversy as the “fault lines in the national
‘imaginaries’ (sic) of both India and Pakistan”.

BAD DREAM

Ms. Ayesha Jalal’s observations assume considerable significance
if only because they substantially support the spirit of whatever
Mr. L. K. Advani said during his Pak visit. His comments had evoked
tremendous goodwill and endeared him to all sections of
the Pakistani society so that even Urdu newspapers hailed him
as the new HERO of Indo-Pak amity and goodwill, forgetting
that they had long despised him as a bigoted Hindu extremist.

Instead of sticking to his absolutely unexceptionable, robust
statements made in Pakistan, he surrendered abjectly to the irrational
demands of the RSS ideologues and a section of his own BJP. His
subsequent subdued utterances indicate that Advani has forgotten
his Pak visit as a “bad dream” and has all but withdrawn into
his old familiar communal shell. In the event, his peace
odyssey that promised to be the biggest CBM (Confidence
Building Measure) in Indo-Pak relations proved to be an
exercise in “the sublime to the ridiculous”.

Advani’s visit to Pakistan and the goodwill he generated through
his mature observations on various issues and fulsome but
scrupulously accurate tributes to Jinnah was a signal service
towards resolving the thorny bilateral problems plaguing India
and Pakistan for more than half a century. But alas that is
not to be, thanks to the utterly shortsighted condemnation
by his detractors across the political spectrum, some on
the plea of elusive, outdated ideological pretensions
and others with purely partisan motives.

IGNOBLE CLIMB DOWN

It is a great pity and greater disaster that he has readily given up
shades of robust realism he exhibited for a few days on his return
from Pakistan though after initial noises of protests. Stung by
the campaign of calumny and vilification by his mentors in
the RSS and VHP, Mr. Advani lost no time in changing his
tune and reverting to his hawkish postures. The ease with
which he seems to have got over his Pak melodrama is amazing.
Sample his speech at Lakhanpur near Jammu to commemorate
Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee’s anniversary on 23rd June.
He audaciously recalled his bravado in sabotaging the
Agra summit and resorted to his old familiar
anti-Pakistan refrain: “No compromise on national interest
to achieve peace”. It is an obvious stipulation under
any circumstances, which requires no reiteration in season
and out of season --- except perhaps his desire to
proclaim his return to the RSS-VHP fold. What an
ignoble climb down!

Similarly Advani’s demand for “the abolition of Article 370 and
full integration of Jammu and Kashmir with India” sounds hollow,
even ludicrous, to the least, while the issue was buried fathoms
deep when the NDA government was in power for six years and
he himself was the deputy prime minister. All these political
somersaults just for retaining his tenuous hold on the party
amidst untold humiliation heaped upon him by all and sundry!

MAN FRIDAY

It is astounding how he dumped his loyal political secretary as a
sacrificial goat for no fault of his except to proffer the
sound advice that the “Hindu Only” approach of the BJP would
lead it nowhere in the mainstream politics of the country
that is so vast and so complex. Poor Sudheendra Kulkarni,
his Man Friday. A trusted aide, he had to stick out his neck
and pay for enunciating the stark truth of the Indian
political scene – that BJP will never be able to win a
clear majority in a general election on an anti-Muslim
plank. The party has to shed its communal baggage if
it wants to return to power on its own, or else it has
to live in a “fool’s paradise”.

India is a vast, complex and complicated entity comprising 4,635
communities, 325 languages belonging to 12 language families,
24 scripts, 17 official languages, the birthplace of four religions
and the home of several others, 12 traditions of classical dance
and 300 ways of cooking potato. If Charles De Gaulle believed one
could not rule a country (France), which produced 246 varieties
of cheese, what is one to make of a country like India? As asked
by Amulya Ganguli in a recent article– “Hawks in the air”,
(referring to both RSS and CPI (M)).

Mr. Sudheendra Kulkarni's much maligned but highly enlightened and
enlightening thesis has come as a breath of fresh air in an atmosphere
fouled by the likes of Praveen Togadia and Ashok Singhal capped by
K. S. Suderashan's unedifying description of politicians as “harlots”.
(This may be broadly true in many respects but certainly not in
the context Advani’s visit to Pakistan).

AKHAND BHARAT

It is amazing how enlightened luminaries of the BJP like Arun Jaitley
have dismissed Kulkarni’s sane views as his “personal” while Advani himself
had clearly supported and adopted them for his approach in his Pakistan
visit. Much is made of the so-called ideological purity of the RSS
and its front organizations like BJP, VHP as though it consists
mainly of Akhand Bharat and opposition to Jinnah’s two-nation
theory. Can anyone in his senses ever dream of undoing it?
Does Sudershan seriously think of ever achieving this miracle?

The late President Shankar Dayal Sharma had once remarked to a
delegation of Akhand Bharat enthusiasts: “There is no constitutional
ban on day dreaming”. It is time the RSS and its cohorts
evolve themselves out of their own jaded mindset and ideology, and
reform in tune with Sudheendra Kulkarni’s realistic thesis
and appreciate that the prevailing situation has metamorphosed
out of recognition since the birth of the RSS 75 years ago.
Mr. Advani had rightly stressed, during his Pak visit,
that the existence of India and Pakistan as two independent
sovereign nations was an “unalterable fact of history”.

GUJARAT AND DELHI MASSACRES

Mr. Kulkarni’s sane and pragmatic views were evident again on yet
another issue in the wake of the Nanavati Commission report on Sikh
killings. Like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s candid apology to
the nation, the BJP must also apologize on the issue of Gujarat
killings, he averred speaking at Bombay last week. But the party
bigwigs and official spokespersons are at pains to invent
“differences” in the two gory events of mass killings,
notwithstanding Mr. Advani’s occasionally discreet description
of the Gujarat happenings as a “blot” on the BJP.

Tailpiece: “You Hindus are very lucky”, remarked Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman,
the Pakistani hard line cleric, when this writer met him in
Islamabad sometime ago. Asked to elucidate, he bemoaned that
Muslims are divided into three countries while Hindus have
remained in one entity. As the eminent journalist Mr. Kuldip
Nayar has pointed out, Muslims have been the biggest losers of
Partition. In undivided subcontinent they would have formed more
than a third of the population --- and votes !

VT Joshi
August 2005

VT JOSHI (1925-2008) worked for more than fifty years as a journalist. He retired
from THE TIMES OF INDIA in 1989. During 1985-89 he was the Special Correspondent of
THE TIMES OF INDIA in Pakistan. His books "PAKISTAN: ZIA TO BENAZIR" and
"INDIA AT CROSS ROADS" (co-author GG Puri) were widely reviewed in both India
and Pakistan.